March 2009
Audio in a social Web of linked data
What do social networks tell us about the discovery, sharing and re-use
of audio resources?
Andy Powell, Eduserv
andy.powell@eduserv.org.uk
www.eduserv.org.uk/research
Unlocking Audio 2
Connecting with Listeners
British Library
March 2009
Image: Gabriela Camerotti @ Flickr
apology
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confession
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I know very little about audio
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I know a little bit about digital libraries
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JISC Information Environment
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Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
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any coherently managed collection of audio
resources delivered via the Web is a “digital
library”...
right?
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on that basis... I hope I have something useful to
say
but we’ll see!
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so... getting back to the audio for a moment
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I increasingly buy my music here
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and here
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and...
I increasingly listen to music here
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and here
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and...
if I was more into educational podcasts, I’d
probably have to access them via
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but let’s ignore iTunes for now
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Blip.fm and Spotify both interesting for a number
of reasons
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both push at the boundaries of how we have
rewarded artists to date
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both are explicitly social in nature
(and like Muxtape which went before, they
represent the evolution of the informal social
sharing of recorded music which has gone on
for decades)
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both are not just “on” the Web but “of” the Web
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Huh? What does
of the Web
actually, like, mean?
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an attitude
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an expectation that your content will be re-used
in ways you didn’t anticipate
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an expectation that people will take your content,
your API and URLs and use them to build
something different
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oddly (given the previous slides) Spotify is not
accessed primarily thru a Web browser but thru
an Adobe Air application
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a situation that will be familiar to many Twitter
users in the room
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aside: when my 19 year old daughter first saw
Spotify her reaction was, “This is amazing, I
never need to buy a CD again”
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which nicely captures a possible generational
change in attitude from ‘ownership’ to ‘access’
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Amazon and iTunes are also ‘social’ but not so
much in the explicit (outward facing) way of
Spotify and Blip.fm
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both derive knowledge from the attention data of
large numbers of users
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whilst Amazon is very much “of” the Web, iTunes
is barely even “on” the Web
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so... that was just anecdotal and by way of
introduction but…
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two important themes that I want to return to
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1) being ‘of’ the Web rather than just ‘on’ the
Web
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2) the importance of ‘social’ activity around
content
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both are important when we think about what it
means to be ‘open’ and to ‘unlock’ content on
the Web
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step back
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look at digital libraries
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in a generic way
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uk-centric
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and specific to higher education
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jisc ie diagram
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focus on the content
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primarily ‘document-like objects’
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focus on describing the content (primarily using
simple Dublin Core metadata)
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and on moving that metadata from providers to
consumers
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for the purposes of resource discovery, access
and use
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and so we talk about the OAI-PMH, Z39.50,
SRW/SRU, OpenURL, Dublin Core and so on
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much of the content is provided commercially
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so there is also a focus on mechanisms to protect
content from inappropriate access
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and, perhaps more importantly…
there is an implied flow
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jisc ie diagram
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the JISC IE says very little about the relationships
between people and content
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and nothing about relationships between people
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it says nothing about the social use that grows
around content
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it talks about identifiers for stuff
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but not about identity (of people)
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this is not unusual for ‘digital library’ activities
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we talk a lot about content, and data formats,
and metadata, and curation, and preservation,
and persistent identifiers, and …
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we even talk about openness, and Creative
Commons, and other open licences
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and these things are all very good and important
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but we don’t talk much about social networks
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which is a shame…
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because while we have been busy building digital
library initiatives like the JISC Information
Environment
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the Web has changed under our feet
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it’s increasingly participatory
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it’s increasingly about user-generated content
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it’s increasingly open
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it’s increasingly social
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3 things that are interesting about these
services...
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firstly, concentration
http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001556.html
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secondly, they are ‘of’ the Web
they support diffusion thru simple and open
APIs, the use of RSS, cool URIs for everything
of value, a RESTful architectural approach, and
so on...
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in short... they see being mashed as a virtue
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thirdly, identity (in these services) is not just
concerned with questions like “who are you and
what are you allowed to do?”
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but also about “this is me, this is who I know,
and this is what I’ve created”
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identity has become user-centric
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concentration, diffusion and identity are enablers
of social interaction
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meanwhile... somewhere in academia
(a alternative case-study)
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the open access
movement
and
scholarly repositories
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a university-based institutional repository is a set of
services that a university offers to the members of its
community for the management and dissemination
of digital materials created by the institution and its
community members. It is most essentially an
organizational commitment to the stewardship of
these digital materials, including long-term
preservation where appropriate, as well as
organization and access or distribution. … An
institutional repository is not simply a fixed set of
software and hardware
(Cliff Lynch, 2003)
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scholarly publications
learning objects
research data
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manage
deposit
disclose
make openly available
curate
preserve
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largely institutional focus
interoperability through centralised aggregators
(national and global)
harvesting metadata about content using OAI-
PMH (metadata = simple Dublin Core)
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jisc ie diagram
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but...
our terminology is confusing to ‘real’ people
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a focus on plain old ‘making content
available on the Web’ would be more
intuitive to researchers than ‘deposit in a
repository’
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a focus on ‘content management’ would change
our emphasis
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OAI-PMH out…
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search engine optimisation, usability,
accessibility, Web design, tagging, information
architecture, cool URIs in…
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Google indexing
RSS feeds
widget technology – embedding functionality into
other sites
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we have tended to adopt service oriented
approaches in line with long
tradition from Z39.50
to SOAP/WSDL
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our focus has been on building
“services on content”
rather than on the
“content” itself
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we don’t tend to adopt a resource oriented
approach
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we don’t adopt REST – an architectural style with
a focus on resources, their identifiers (e.g.
URIs), and a simple
uniform set of operations
that each resource
supports (e.g. GET,
PUT, POST, DELETE)
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we don’t encourage a
Web style “follow your nose” approach
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… and we tend to treat “content” in isolation from
the “social networks” that need to grow around
that content
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successful “repositories” (Flickr, YouTube,
Slideshare, etc.) promote the social activity that
takes place around content as well as the
content management and disclosure activity
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the institutional approach has fundamental
mismatch with the real-life social networks
adopted by researchers
subject-based
cross-institutional
global
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while institutional approach is
good from perspective of institutional
management, preservation, etc.
globally “concentrated” repositories might better
reflect the social networks that need to arise
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the net effect …is that there is no net effect
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repositories remain uncompelling places to
disclose scholarly publications from POV of the
researcher
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perceived cost of deposit remains higher than
perceived benefits
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we resort to institutional or funder mandates,
“thou shalt deposit”, to fill what would
otherwise remain empty
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what would a Web 2.0 repository
look like?
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high-quality browser-based document viewer (not
Acrobat!)
tagging, commentary, more-like-this, favorites, …
persistent (cool) URIs to content
ability to form simple social groups
ability to embed documents in other Web sites
high visibility to Google
offer RSS as primary API
use of Amazon S3 to cope with scalability
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final thought
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visitors vs. residents
http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2008/07/23/not-
natives-immigrants-but-visitors-residents/
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counterpoint to the whole ‘Google generation’,
‘digital native’ meme
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resident – “an individual who lives a percentage
of their life online”
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visitor – “an individual who uses the web as a
tool in an organised manner whenever the need
arises”
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the cultural heritage sector tends to build services
aimed at visitors
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I think we should be designing with residents in
mind
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conclusions...
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http://www.plasticbag.org/images/extra/native_02.jpg
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what would I do if I was advising on something
like the JISC Information Environment now?
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I’d aim to be as like the mainstream Web as
possible
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I’d ask “How would Google do this?” more often
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I’d focus on the basics
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I’d focus on the principles of linked data
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html
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use URIs to name things
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use HTTP URIs so that people can look them up
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provide useful information when people
dereference the URIs
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include links to other things as part of that
information (so that the recipient can find new
things)
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I’d promote the principles of cool URIs
(practical persistence)
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I’d strongly encourage a RESTful architectural
approach
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I’d encourage RSS / Atom as essential point of
access
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I’d focus on the social aspects of the systems
being built
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implies that the Open Stack (OpenID, OAuth, ...)
is increasingly important
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I’d focus on building stuff for residents rather
than visitors
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thank you
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